A couple years ago I come across the girl in the Famicom game Moon Crystal and though, you know with a little bit of editing I could change her to look like Princess Toadstool. Dress, arms, face would only need a color change, the hard part would be getting her hair right as well as crafting a crown. I dabbled in some attempts over time but never was able to even get the flip in her hair right, each time giving up in frustration. This challenge came up on Sprite Stitch, "Royalty" and she was the first character that came to mind.
Typically I tend to stitch lesser known or less popular characters, but given how much I wanted to edit Merle into the likeness of the princess of the Mushroom Kingdom, I had to do her. I started editing. Somehow, this time I got her hair to look pretty good and so continued to edit, the crown actually proving to be the hardest. Originally I was going to do her with reddish brown hair as per her NES sprites but artwork shows her with blonde hair and later games from SNES onward she's a blonde so I went with what's more known being as she's not some obscure princess. It took me all morning into the early afternoon to finish editing her, though I'm really surprised it didn't take longer, guess the time was right. So far to date she uses the most colors I've used in a single cross-stitch piece.
Originally I had started stitching her on black aida (in the darkness, afraid, in King Koopa's dungeon awaiting rescue) as this was something I used a lot for most of my cross-stitches over the years, but ever since I started stitching on the plastic stuff, now I have a hard time going back to aida. Once done I attached a large lobster claw to her so that I can hook her to my handbag or something, could even be an oversized necklace, anyway, options are open to many ways to wear or display, and that's what I like about the plastic opposed to the aida (just took me a while, me not taking to change very easily). Oh, one detail was left out, her sideburns. I didn't realize until I had already gotten into stitching, oh well, so today she decided to put those locks of hair back with the rest of her long hair to better display her pretty earrings.
original sprite - Merle from the intro of Moon Crystal:
Princess Toadstool - Moon Crystal sprite edit
MATERIAL:
Plastic Canvas (14ct)
SIZE:
41x57 pixels
COLORS (DMC):
White
3761 - Light Sky Blue
996 - Medium Electric Blue
3753 - Ultra Very Light Antique Blue
813 - Light Blue
825 - Dark Blue
796 - Dark Royal Blue
153 - Very Light Voilet
3608 - Very Light Plum
917 - Medium Plum
3685 - Dark Mauve
963 - Ultra Very Light Dusty Rose
760 - Salmon
402 - Very Light Mahogany
301 - Medium Mahogany
3857 - Dark Rosewood
739 - Ultra Very Light Tan
676 - Light Old Gold
830 - Dark Golden Olive
564 - Very Light Jade
906 - Medium Parrot Green
986 - Very Dark Forest Green
3021 - Very Dark Brown Gray
Black
total colors: 24
DATE/TIME:
Started stitching: June 19th 2016
Finished stitching: June 26th 2016
640 minutes = 10 hours 40 minutes
STITCHES:
1569
note: color choices in PCstitch not what I used, I just use this program to get accurate stitch count.
